


In the Interstices

by homsantoft (tofsla)



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: M/M, wallowing in a room full of memories and other healthy coping mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-16
Updated: 2018-03-16
Packaged: 2019-04-01 00:18:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13986384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tofsla/pseuds/homsantoft
Summary: Samot comes to Samothes one last time, by an unexpected route.





	In the Interstices

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Iambic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iambic/gifts).



> James gave me the prompt “visitation” for the sad sad gods. I love to suffer. Here you go.

A slow walk from bedroom to forge. Memory is a sea and Samothes parts it gently, step by step. It swirls around him. Laps up against him. The day in the high mountains when Severea showed him the secret paths that animals leave. See, little brother? Yes, he remembers it—dents in the moss, the bent blades of grass that clung in hollows, half-drowned in snow. Samol taught him songs, sitting on a fallen tree by a vast lake, the wind singing along. My boy, you make me proud. Galenica stood by his side and surveyed the field, hammer and shield. Ah, these memories would like to keep him—these memories that are only so much water.

Samot is a riptide. Oh my love, oh my love—oh, how you tear at me—

He has walked these memories a thousand thousand times, and they move him all the same—

Here is Samot on his knees with the sun golden in his hair, kissing Samothes' hand—

Here is Samot with his expression focused, papers sorted into piles on Samothes' desk in front of him—notes scrawled with furious speed—ink on his hands—ink on his shirt—

Here is Samot bent over that same desk, clutching in vain at its smooth surface, his voice shuddering and breaking on a rising note—

Here, here, here. 

"I love you," Samot says in memory, his eyes not meeting Samothes'—head turned to the side—the flush clear on his cheeks. There's something close to tears in the catch of his voice. Samothes examines himself from the outside, as he has done so many times: this younger man who watches Samot with avid attention, taken with the shape of his lips and the line of his jaw, beyond all reason. Here: Samothes reaches for Samot. Here: Samot trembles at the first touch of his hand, shivers—turns—oh, how hard he swallows. Oh, how many emotions flow across his face before his expression settles into the simplest sort of need—

How raw that need becomes—

Samot looks at him—

At him—

At _him._

He is caught—pulled below the surface of his own mind. That was the day Samothes whispered promises into Samot’s neck, asked the question at last—would you be mine, then—can I swear my loyalty to you? A ring given by my hand to show this to the world. Came apart, nearly, at Samot’s consent.

Here. He is seen, not as a young man but as worn as he is now. Hands on his face, the nails sharp at the corners of his jaw. Oh, Samot has his vast and deadly patience, but he has his burning impatience too—he has always been such a thing of contradictions.

Blood on the tongue and a tender hand on the cheek—a sweet brush of lips and a gash on the chest. It was that way from the first time they kissed.

It's been so long, so long, so long.

Samot’s eyes are sad. He has left his youth behind, stepped out of it and into Samothes’ arms.

"You keep me here," Samot says, and kisses him again—teeth to hurt him and a tongue to soothe it away—a messy open-mouthed thing, consuming. He breaks away flushed, and Samothes knows his face mirrors it. "So much of me, my love. I didn't know—"

"This never happened," Samothes murmurs. In these memories he always feels unreal—constructed this space to allow himself that, a drifting dreaming moment between waking and working. But this is not, this cannot—he has walked these memories a thousand thousand times—Samot has never said these words to him. In no reality.

At no time has a piece of memory turned to him in this way.

Touched him.

That isn’t how this works. 

He holds Samot to him all the same.

"Hush," Samot says, and this time there is only sweetness, the unmixed care of Samot's hands and mouth on his unsteady body a sort of pain in itself, tearing and aching. "This is going to end soon. It's almost time."

"What did you do?" Samothes asks. Slow and drifting still. Settle and something will break—move and this strange taut thread will snap—

He needs it to snap, but he can't _want_ it.

"You already know."

"Maelgwyn—yes—I do. But this—"

"I'm not really here," Samot says. His smile is tired. Darkness lives around the corners of his eyes. "It's only a dream of a door, the way in I found. Or maybe this is just—all you. Ingenuity, right? Inventing me."

"I could never have."

Samot's breath has an edge to it, in and out. "No," he says. "I suppose not. Would you—"

But he leaves the sentence unfinished.

Samothes cannot stay. He cannot leave.

Samot turns his face towards the memory of them, the memory that he stepped out of, leaving a shadow of himself behind. They look so young—Samothes knew it—but feels it more sharply with Samot before him in another form. So young and so in love. 

What was tiredness becomes something deeper, the exhaustion of—what to call it?

But he knows it.

It's loneliness.

"Love," Samothes says, and he feels that both of them crumple at once, in some essential way.

"It'll be over," Samot says.

It will.

"I'm nearly ready," Samothes says. He reaches for Samot, for the living dream of him, older and more worn than even the worst memory. "It's alright, Samot."

Samot shakes his head, but doesn't pull away—pulls Samothes closer, rather. "No," he says.

"You hate crying," Samothes says, with quiet wonder—touches Samot's cheek, his neck. One last time.

"I hate _you_ ," Samot says, with a desperate tender longing—and yes, one may take a final kiss—

Samothes does. He makes it slow and deep and careful—feels the old spark and flood of heat in himself, shifting with every touch—

"That's good," he murmurs against Samot's lips—

And he closes his eyes, so that he doesn't have to see the moment of loss itself. Oh, even he may be weak.

When he opens his eyes they are young again—and he stumbles—and even that flows away from him—the currents of memory shift—

Maelgwyn laughs and runs through long grass, and Samot runs after him, and both of them are laughing, their golden hair bright in the sun—

A younger Samothes is sitting on the steps of the house, smiling, and he seems so happy—no, he is—was. Samothes knows, remembers, that happiness.

He sits down beside himself. Just for a moment—just until this ache subsides—until he can't feel the ghost of Samot's kiss upon his lips.

It's such a beautiful spring day.

**Author's Note:**

> I’m toftochfyren on twitter, find me yelling about Friends at the Table.


End file.
